And Other Freedoms
by scorpiaux
Summary: "They all talked about missing out on lives," she said, "on futures that now seem lost." Variant vignettes following the ATLA girls and guys. Some AU; all pairings (including requests); rated M
1. Four Walls and Peace

**And Other Freedoms**

**Summary**: "They all talked about missing out on lives," she said, "on futures that now seem lost." Variant vignettes following the ATLA girls and guys. Some AU; all pairings (including requests); rated M

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_"Four walls and Peace"_

The war ends, and we become a moving mad house – we are always moving.

There are brevities where we discuss settling down. But Aang flips his lower lip out and shakes his head slow, as if "no" is less threatening this way. His reaction at least makes sense. We can't leash in the air or nail it to a front yard; the nomad fault is genetic, invariable. We remember he is the last of this breed, that his people were ethnically cleansed, and it makes it so that we have no right to question any of the ridiculous minutiae of his ancient culture. He gets away with so much just by being him.

Sokka's disproving grunts at the matter, though, are unwelcomed, almost shocking. Before Ozai fell, all he wanted was "a place somewhere." Even Toph rolls her inoperable eyes, sticks a wad of tobacco between her lip and gums and spits over Appa's saddle like she's spitting on the proposal itself.

Suki is the only one who agrees, but only sometimes and only in a small voice. I suspect she is afraid my brother will reject the idea and think differently of her. When the tendrils of commitment approach she ebbs back and wonders off on her own. During the war she felt she needed to be brave and loud, but now she dissolved into our transient background. I feel she is almost thankful for it.

Suki and I have the same problem; we want to be fun-loving and wild. But the war tamed us, left bruises the shape of fingerprints on our ribs so we can't laugh too hard, and softened the wild quality of our hair with nights of cold, loud rain, making us wish for four walls and peace.

There were ideas. Every city in the world opened its doors to welcome us. Aang refused to stay in one spot for more than seven days. The night before we traveled again, he became antsy, spent the night beneath the dark blue heaven on his back, his hands reaching above his head yanking out patches of dewy grass and yellowed weeds.

We were experimenting touching one another and it was strange to feel him leave my side right after his head had explored my thighs for hours. His abandonment, however brief, brought unexpected jealousy with it. I didn't follow him because my pride was heavier than the urge to know what he was doing or why he left. I pretended to be exhausted and asleep. But a few nights I watched from far away. When the moon was bright enough, his limbs stood out as silhouettes and he resembled a tall, drawn ghost.

Today we are in the same predicament. Ba Sing Sei, Day Six. We can chronicle our lives in these single digit numbers. Suki is tired and threw up all over the motel's indoor tub. Toph's suspicion is that she's pregnant; she shared this piece of information with me this morning in the bathhouse. "Give it another few weeks," she promised, "she'll start to inflate like a gourd and there will be no question then."

"Maybe but I don't want to believe you."

She warned me, "It can happen to you too if you aren't careful." There was no cynical edge in her tone, no sarcastic, biting one-liner.

"You hear us?"

"Unfortunately I can't turn off my feet. I don't mind. Just be careful." She was wrapping herself in a towel and the steam from her bath coiled off her pale skin in thick white ribbons. The draft that came in through the paneled door speckled her arms with goose bumps. We were alone because we woke up too late, and though the water was still hot, the floors were slick with puddles and the other stalls were empty. We were leaving the city in a few hours.

"I'm sorry you hear us." She sat on the bench and waited for me to finish combing through my hair. There is something about a weak apology that makes you wish you meant it. But we are new at sex, at touching, and it almost made me proud to know I had an audience. It was a strange attitude to have; it made me feel stupid and cool at the same time.

She said, "What's it like?"

I wanted to say, with the level of aloofness that marks it insignificant, "It's whatever. It's okay," and leave it at that but I answered, with a small honest tremble in my throat, "It scares me." I bended the droplets of water off of my shoulders and off of hers so we wouldn't freeze. "We don't know what we're doing," I admitted, because she must know.

"It still must be nice."

"Sometimes it's nice. Sometimes it hurts and I don't like it. But I guess when it's good, it's very good."

"You react the same way either way. When it's good or bad, same noises from you, same noises from him. If I'm not too tired I go to Appa's saddle," she said. "I don't sit and listen. That's sick."

"Good to know. Sometimes I fake it. You have to when you start, I think."

This answer satisfied her and she ended the conversation by jabbing my arm. "Hurry the fuck up, will you?"

When we cut through the clouds an hour later, Aang is at the reigns, directing Appa south. I watch the slope of his back curve with his steering. A year ago his shoulders were thin and emaciated. Today he has the broad back of a man with direction. I join him on Appa's head and kiss the skin between his ear and neck.

"Are you my copilot today?" His smile is easy, genuine. "I have to warn you that I can't pay you what you're used to."

"It's okay, it's my first day on the job."

"Unpaid internship. You have to get me coffee whenever I ask for it." I slap his thigh and kiss him again. In my ear he says, "And I get to assault you whenever I want," and winks.

"Sounds like too much trouble." He kisses my mouth. His lips are cold from this bad air, and he still smells like sleep.

"I was thinking about what you said. About settling down. I don't think it's a good idea."

"You've made that clear already." The clouds are beneath us now. Yellow and exuberant, they resemble a sea of butter and orange rinds.

"It's not a good idea for me," he clarifies. "But if you want…"

I know what he'll say, so I half-listen, and somehow though I anticipated it before, the notion makes me sick to my stomach. What would I do in the South Pole without him or Sokka? Suddenly it becomes clear that I can't have a life without them, and the dependency feels new though it's been here since we first met. I get an urge to fling myself into the clouds just to see what he'll do, to show him I'm important to him, too.

With some authority I say, "Don't say that. You aren't leaving. If it has to be, I'll learn to make the clouds home." Then behind me in the saddle, Suki clutches her stomach and vomits over the side. Toph shakes her head 'tsk-tsk,' and Sokka worriedly holds his girlfriend's chocolate curls hair away from her face. Aang turns around, too, and his expression is defiantly blank, shocked. Whatever settlement he is running from is close on his heels and it terrifies him. I feel loved but I also feel he wants to dispose of us and doesn't know how. Love, with its enormous mouth and tight occlusion, has imprisoned us here, and between layers of atmosphere we remain trapped, running, and waiting.

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_**A/N**: A photographer named Elena Dorfman visited Jordan and Lebanon to chronicle Syrian refugee lives; she chose to focus on teenagers, and included a spread in The New Yorker, from which I borrowed the quote included in the summary._

_These are short and sweet, and you can read them in any order you chose. I needed a place to publish all the loose-end, backstreet stories that wouldn't have been revisited otherwise. This first one is kind of strange... of course, let me know your thoughts, if you'd like to see more of these, and what you'd like to see!_


	2. Home with Poppy

**And Other Freedoms**

**Summary**: "They all talked about missing out on lives," she said, "on futures that now seem lost." Variant vignettes following the ATLA girls and guys. Some AU; all pairings (including requests); rated M

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_"Home with Poppy" _

A year passes and Ma starts to get on my case, sends after me with messengers and letters to diplomats. Soon every city I visit with Twinkle Toes happens to have a letter from my parents asking me to reconsider traveling around - with such charming phrases as "like a common gypsy" or "as if you do not already have a home." I didn't think it was possible for Ma's nag to come through in letters. But even when someone else read it (hell, even when _Sokka_ read her notes to me) it sounded like Ma alright, nasally, shrill and up in my face, like my moving away was all about her, and how could I do this? Didn't I miss being home?

I did. On the street, when I got a whiff of a bun cart, I'd remember Ma's steaming red bean buns, and a line of drool would hang from my lips like a starved dog. Or I'd smell young pork on a spit roasting, or a carton of ripe fruit tarts, or some sweet soy cake getting sliced in a bakery, and I'd just _want_.

I don't know if it was nostalgia or the greedy belly my parents raised, but many days, I'd want to eat like a spoiled brat again. You never actually outgrow the good life, you just forget about it temporarily but it always comes back and waves to you, invites you in. I loved my freedom but I missed Ma's cooking, I missed my dad reading the paper to me at night near by bed, and I missed hearing their conversations through the wall of my bedroom. There were little things they did for each other that made me envious of their esoteric, silent love. Like when Dad left the house every morning to go the market himself. He'd come back with a bouquet of good-smelling flowers for Ma (later I learned they were white roses), and a chocolate turtle-duck for me. It had nuts inside, sometimes cream, sometimes this sticky nectar that wouldn't come off my chin no matter how hard the handmaids rubbed. In the evening Ma made my father's favorite desserts, little pinched dough sheets fried up until they were puffy and light.

When I think about it, most of our communication happened through food, through taste. I don't remember colors or music in that house (how can I when it was dark, silent?) but the sounds and the smells are so strong, they pull me back home on their own.

So Ma wins and that's how the story goes. Poppy gets her way. Finally I moved back home. Admittedly, it was not the best time to make this kind of decision, and I knew it but couldn't help it. Sokka was still with Suki but somehow they were on the rocks. Something about where they were going to move, or her attitude, or wanting to control her, or her wanting more affection from him - I can't remember the most recent excuse. But he told me it was over and he came to me angry and ranting. All the weak, trembling feelings I had when I was a kid come back when Sokka is around, in-a-relationship or not, married or not, over-Sokka-for-sure or not. We fucked like the dogs we are, he left to go to her after we were through and apologized. We've done this enough times to write it on a calender and chart a trend, as inconsistent and imminent as the weather.

So I went back home. Little blind girl finds her way back to Poppy and Lao. Little blind girl finally wears shoes and gives up the gypsy life. The underground life. The wrestling, the lying, the tricking, the badger moles. I imagine how I must look like now, twenty-four years old, with the only two bags I own under my arms, my face all screwed up thinking about Sokka, my bare feet splashed with roadside grime. It's a sight for sore eyes. Ma comes out with her heartbeat skipping like she's won the damn lottery.

"Tophie is here! Lao, Lao!"

Dad emerges from the marble stoop with a cane and it sends my heart to my knees. I didn't think they'd ever age much. Somehow you always imagine your parents in their thirties, in their prime and full of hair and muscle.

They usher me in, taking a bag each. I can only feel one maid in the villa, a male or a heavy female, but it doesn't surprise me. Most of their help in the past was for me. Security guards, tutors, on-call doctors, maids, even paid playmates. Our house was full and brimming a decade ago.

We sit down. Ma takes my hand and I can feel her sigh build in her chest before I hear it. "Your skin," she laments, "it's gotten so dark, little one."

"It's not the end of the world, Ma."

She can tell I'm defensive so she drops it. Beauty is not my thing; it's not like I can tell what color I am anyway. Dad sits next to me and sips from his tea. The maid, definitely a heavyset female, immediately pours me a glass and hands it to me, reaching for my hand to guide it to the cup. Dad surprises me by chastising her. "She knows where your hand is," he says, and it's almost grumpy. But I like it.

I think they know what's going on. Ma asks if I've had my heart broken, and Dad asks who did it. They assume first that it was Aang, as if I left my home to be with him for love. The idea makes me laugh only because I know how close Katara and Aang are these days, already married with kid number two on the way. I imagine myself, Katara, and Aang naked on a huge bed - me in the middle - and I snort out my nose laughing. Please. You couldn't get between those two with a fucking gold crowbar.

But I don't need to tell them. And I don't.

They have their annoying tendencies, true, but it's home. And for the first few weeks I practically fall in love with it. I eat so much, I gain five pounds. I laze around whenever I want to - the only catch is that I have to dress like a lady, and that is not so bad as it used to be. It was worse when I was twelve, with my body changing and the clothing fluffy and stiff. Now I feel fancy. In the mirror that I can't use, I tell myself I'm the most expensive bitch in the Earth Kingdom. Even my underwear has lace and gems on it. Honestly, it makes me feel beautiful in a way that I didn't know I could get outside of sex.

When Aang and Katara write to me to come to Republic City, Ma and Dad are hesitant to read it to me. I imagine seeing Sokka again and decide to wait it out. I know eventually I'll end up going, and the thought makes me a little sad, because Ma and Dad are getting old. Dad has arthritis in both knees. Ma is diabetic. Both of their dietary restrictions: no pastries, no chocolate turtle-ducks, no fried dough. Despite this, Dad and his rickety knees still leave for the market every morning and come back with a turtle-duck for me.

It's around the third week when I catch the housekeeper stealing, and I take it upon myself to fire her (or literally fire her out of the ceiling; good to know that her clutch was not tight enough to hold on to Ma's jade bracelets). I hire someone else. It's a younger girl, about sixteen, and she is good, doesn't lie, doesn't go out with boys to wrestle (in bed or otherwise), and is a gem at taking care of the house. In addition, she's partially deaf due to a Fire Nation raid on her city years ago. I can't put my finger on why exactly, but she fits into the villa as well as a glove. Only after I employed her did it feel like I had never left.

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**A/N:** _Many thanks for the faves, alerts, reviews! I LOVE the freedom this fic is affording me. I can literally write about whatever I want. So I hope you are enjoying them! I had a request to do Katara/Ozai... I didn't even know this was a thing lol. Thoughts? _


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